Books published by publisher FABER andamp

Heaney, Seamus. Beowulf A New Translation. London, Faber & Faber, 1999. 14.5 cm x 22.5 cm. XXX, 106 pages with diagram of family trees. Original hardcover with dustjacket in protective mylar. Excellent condition with only very minor signs of external wear. Clean inside with solid binding. A translation of the 10th-century Anglo-Saxon poem relating Beowulf's triumphs as a young warrior and his fated death as a defender of his people. Heaney has aimed to produce a work true both to the original, which is one of the classics of European literature, and to his own creativity. (Amazon).

Originally published in 1937, Tenant for Death is the first novel by Cyril Hare, one of the best-loved Golden Age crime writers. Two young estate agent's clerks are sent to check an inventory on a house in Daylesford Gardens, South Kensington. Upon arrival, they find an unlisted item - a corpse. Furthermore, the mysterious tenant, Colin James, has disappeared. In a tale which uncovers many of the seedier aspects of the world of high finance, Hare also introduces his readers to the formidable Inspector Mallett of Scotland Yard. Upon first publication the Times Literary Supplement praised Tenant for Death as 'a most ingenious story' while the Spectator celebrated its 'wit, fair play, and characterization' and also declared that 'a new star has risen'.

Set in mid-1970s india, a fine balance is a subtle and compelling narrative about four unlikely characters who come together in circumstances no one could have foreseen soon after the government declares a 'state of internal emergency'. It is a breathtaking achievement: panoramic yet humane, intensely political yet rich with local delight; and, above all, compulsively readable.

Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it's awful.' This line from the play was adopted by Jean Anouilh to characterize the first production of Waiting for Godot at the Théâtre de Babylone in 1953. He went on to predict that the play would, in time, represent the most important premiere to be staged in Paris for forty years. Nobody acquainted with Beckett's masterly black comedy would now question this prescient recognition of a classic of twentieth-century literature.

These thirty stories, selected and introduced by fellow crime writer and lawyer Michael Gilbert, are a terrific introduction to Cyril Hare's inventive and clever Golden Age detective fiction, which often turns on an ingenious use of the law. Born in 1900, Hare was a barrister and judge and only began writing at the age of thirty-six. Some of his first short stories were published in Punch and he went on to write nine novels including his most famous, Tragedy at Law. Two of the stories in this collection feature Francis Pettigrew, a barrister and amateur detective who appeared in several of Hare's novels and was perhaps his best-loved creation. 'Dazzlingly ingenious.' Sunday Times 'Of Cyril Hare's detective stories my only complaint is, that they are too infrequent.' Tatler 'A master of the short story.' Spectator 'Neat, taut and sufficiently dipped in irony to give a sharp tang to the quirks of love and life.' Glasgow Herald

'In 1958 - the year in which Krushchev came to power in Russia, the year after Eden's resignation over Suez, two years after John Osborne's "Look Back in Anger" - the last of the debutantes, myself among them, went to the Palace to curtsey to the Queen.' Fiona MacCarthy and her fellow 'debs' were taking part in one of the final rituals of aristocratic power. The system had been in operation almost unchanged since the eighteenth-century. It was a female rite of passage, an elaborate initiation ceremony marking the emergence of the virgin out of the schoolroom and into society at the marriageable age of seventeen. But that year, in 1958, it was drawing to a close. Under pressure to shine - not least from their mothers - the girls were somewhere between teenagers and clones of the Queen herself. Still the focus for newspaper diarists and society photographers, these young women participated in a party season stretching for months among the great houses of London and the Home Counties. Yet behind all the grandeur lay anxiety and making-do, as many families struggled to maintain the splendour of former times. Filtered through some of its most colourful and eccentric inhabitants, from Lady Caroline Lamb in the eighteenth-century to Princess Diana in the twentieth, "Last Curtsey" is a riveting portrait of Britain as both empire and the customs and certainties of the old order came to an end.

Boxed set of the three books in the first 'Adventures of Eddie Dickens' series. Join Eddie Dickens in a nineteenth-century world of blotchy skin, runaway orphans, eccentric relatives and a stuffed stoat called Malcolm. Contains paperbacks of 'Awful End', 'Dreadful Acts' and 'Terrible Times'. Philip Ardagh introduces us to Eddie Dickens and his crazy family, his parents, Mad Uncle Jack and Even Madder Aunt Maud with her stuffed stoat called Malcolm. Hilarious and nefarious.